Graphic from the SF Bicycle Coalition. In Oregon, the opposite is true — the image on the left is “correct” and the right is “wrong.”

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is so afraid of how Uber’s autonomous vehicles take right turns at intersections that they’ve posted a warning for bike riders and have started a petition to force the company to end the practice.

Interestingly, the dangerous maneuver being made by Uber-bots is exactly what Oregon law requires — and what Portland’s chief bike planner prefers.

One of the new crossbikes at NE 37th and Killingsworth.(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

It’s been eight years since Portland proudly proclaimed the color green as its go-to hue for bikes. Now, following in the footsteps of bike boxes and green lanes that have sprouted up all over town, it’s time to say hello to “crossbikes.”[Read more…]

The Portland metro area seems to have already discovered how to slow the growth of traffic congestion, the city’s bicycle planning coordinator said Friday. But it’s not investing in it very quickly.

Between 2000 and 2014, the three Oregon counties in the metro area added 122,000 new commuters. And inside the Metro urban growth boundary, less than half of that net growth came from people driving alone in cars.

In yesterday’s post about a flurry of new, smallish protected bike lane projects around town, we promised a follow-up post about some other street changes on the way.

As with the nine projects we explored yesterday, Portland Bicycle Planning Coordinator Roger Geller presented these to the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee on Tuesday night. None of these will transform a neighborhood, but all three will clarify links in the city’s bike network.

NE 16th/Sandy – installing this summer

This is the most unusual of the three designs here. It’s a three-block link between the Benson Polytechnic High School area and Sandy, leading to the Ankeny-Couch-Davis-Everett neighborhood greenway. The issue is that because of a freeway onramp in this area, northbound auto traffic on 16th Avenue between Irving and Sandy exceeds the city’s standard for a comfortable shared bike-car lane, but southbound traffic is lower.

“We’re a Platinum-level city because of the outcomes we’ve achieved.”— Roger Geller, PBOT Bike Coordinator

The Bureau of Transportation wants to remind everyone that Portland still deserves to be Platinum.

As local activist Will Vanlue continues to gain traction and headlines for his petition (it’s up to 550 signatures) to have Portland’s Platinum bicycle-friendly status downgraded by the League of American Bicyclists, PBOT has gone on the defensive.

The agency has put together a seven-page document outlining their case and they reached out to us for a conference call this morning to talk about it. On the call was PBOT Bike Coordinator Roger Geller, spokesman Dylan Rivera, and Margi Bradway the manager of PBOT’s Active Transportation division.

Geller opened up the conversation with a spirited defense of PBOT’s bike legacy which he delivered as if he were speaking to supporters at a political rally:[Read more…]

The side-street bikeways are known in Portland as neighborhood greenways to capture their appeal as places to walk, jog, shoot hoops and so on. But the City of Portland’s project shows that six — inner SE Clinton, SE Lincoln near 53rd, NE Tillamook near Grant High School, SE 86th near Powell, inner Northwest Johnson and upper NW 24th — clearly fail national standards for auto counts on bike boulevards.